Rating: 
Summary: One of the best English biographers at her very best
Review: The only living English biographers I can think of who are in any way comparable to Claire Tomalin are Richard Holmes and Peter Ackroyd, and of the three I am not sure if Tomalin isn't the best. Certainly she is the most compulsively readable: she has a fine ability to clarify confusing historical matters and offer a clear and compelling narrative line. This book on Samuel Pepys, her latest work, shows Tomalin at her very best. Pepys lived through (and was an important witness to) some of the most complex and drmaatic changes in British history--the Civil War, the Restoration, the Great Plague of London, the Great Fire, and the Glorious Revolution--and Tomalin presents them all so clearly and simply it's a bit of a wonder. Her work is animated by her great admiration and fondness her subjects, Samuel and Elizabeth Pepys. She never shirks in showing their many faults (Pepys's sexual compulsiveness with other women, both Pepys's physical violence towards each other and their servants) but she is also very attuned to what remarkable people they were, and how they jointly contributed (Pepys directly, Elizabeth indirectly) to one of the most remarable documents of all time: Pepys's great diary, the first great record of the Enlightenment self. I could not put this book down!
Rating:
Summary: An Unequaled Biography
Review: This biography fully deserves all the praise it has been getting: it is intelligent, sympathetic to its subject without being worshipful, and the language is fresh. Pepys was an important public figure in his day and reading about him, one learns a lot about English history in the second half of the seventeenth century. Best of all, Tomalin succeeds in bringing him and his times very much to life without in any way compromising the great distance between his age - which was as close to the Middle Ages as to us - and our own. Tomalin, clearly, is engaged largely by Pepys as diarist. Unfortunately for her, and for her biography, Pepys lived almost forty years after putting his diary aside, and her treatment of this part of his life - that is, most of it - is dutiful (and dealt with in 100 pages, only a quarter of the book) rather than inspired. This book is, nonetheless, an admirable achievement by any standard, and a great pleasure to read.
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